THE DESTINIES OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

SECTION FIRST.

THE VARIATIONS OF ROME THREE TIMES IN THREE HUNDRED YEARS.

622. Fact the Eleventh — If£ you compare the astonishing variations of the Latin churches on the subject of this book during the three first centuries of Christianity, with their immovable firmness during the fifteen centuries that have elapsed since Jerome’s time to our own, you will be forced to recognise again the intervention of an invisible power in this inexplicable contrast. For one firmly-established historical fact¹ is, first of all, that the canonicity of this scripture, constantly maintained in the East down to the present day, was equally maintained in the West during the century and a half that followed its first appearance. And then another historical fact is not less established, that after this century and a half the Latin churches, but especially that of Rome, allowed themselves to be prejudiced against the epistle, and rejected it for another century and a half.

The first of these two facts is abundantly attested, as to the first century and the beginning of the second, by the epistle of Clement; and, as to the end of the second and the beginning of the third, by the work, recently discovered, of Hippolytus the ‘martyr.

But the second of these two facts is not less attested by contemporary authors, among others by Eusebius,² Jerome³ and Philastrius. Now, this error of the Latin churches was begun under Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome, (from 202 to 219,) and under Calistus, his successor, (from 219 to 223,) by a priest of that city named Caius, whom Eusebius has often cited, and who, in a famous dispute with the Montanists, was the first to question the Pauline authorship of this epistle, on account of the advantages it seemed to give his adversaries in their ardent disputes about discipline. From the time of Caius, the credit of the epistle among the Latins rapidly diminished; and while in the Hast they firmly persisted in holding it to be canonical and written by Paul, the churches of the West, and especially that of Rome, ceased to read it in their assemblies or to regard it as an inspired book.

We wish you to recollect the testimonies, already cited, of Jerome and Eusebius, and add to them that of Philastrius, the intimate friend of Ambrose, in 380. In his book De Haeresibus, at the 34th article, entitled “Heresy of some persons on the subject of the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews” — “Some persons also,” he says, “maintain that it is not his.” “They read in the church only his thirteen epistles, and sometimes that to the Hebrews.”

628. Such, then, have been three times in the course of three hundred years the variations of Rome on this important subject; until at last the hour for the providential fixation of the canon having struck, all the Latin churches, as if by concert, embraced the orthodox testimony of the Eastern churches, and thus, by a new revolution, returned to the sound doctrine of the canon.

SECTION SECOND.

THE FIRMNESS OF ROME SINCE THE FIXATION OF THE CANON,

624. Now, then, I ask — After such great changes of opinion, happening at so short a distance from the days of the apostles, and at a time much less impure than subsequent ages, was there not reason to expect that these same Latin churches would vacilJate still more in the course of ages? And is not the immovable firmness exceedingly striking which they have shewn for the fifteen centuries that have elapsed between Jerome’s time and ours? Whence, then, this contrast? so much inconstancy in these better days — so much fidelity in the worst? Whence came this heresy (as Philastrius calls it) — a heresy so precocious, in a church visited, and almost founded, so short a time before, by the very author of the epistle, and governed after him by his disciple Clement? Whence came it, only a hundred years after Clement, who had himself in Rome so often cited this epistle, (as we have seen,) and yet at a time when the whole East remained invariably faithful to it? And afterwards, how came it to pass that there was so prompt and universal a return to the truth that had been abandoned for a century and a half? But let us say more — for here is what more than all is inexplicable without Divine intervention — How comes it to pass that henceforward, during the course of fifteen hundred years, these same churches, in times far more corrupt than those of Jerome, have never hestitated again in their testimony, notwithstanding they have erred on so many other points?

This epistle, so long regarded as inspired, then rejected for a century and a half, is all at once, by a spontaneous movement — without any human mandate — without premeditated concert — everywhere received again a second time as canonical. And then, what is still more extraordinary, from that moment to our own days, this question has been no longer a matter of doubt in any church, Among the Latin churches, that were so long refractory, there has been no hesitation for fifteen hundred years; and if too often, the Caiuses of former times may be seen again publishing their scepticism about some book of the New Testament, you will not find a single church that will listen to or follow them, now the canon has been providentially fixed!

625. We assert once more, for the eleventh time, that this comes from on high; and we think that no one can give any other adequate and satisfactory answer. God has guaranteed His written Word, for the simple reason that it was God who formed it; and to accomplish this object, He stretched forth one hand invisibly over the synagogues, and the other over the churches,

“The living oracles have been intrusted to them.”

SECTION THIRD.

TWO CONSIDERATIONS WHICH RENDER THIS PROOF MORE STRIKING.

626. When, in reading history, you come to this vacillation in the Latin churches during the times of Caius and Pope Zephyrinus,⁴ you will generally find the two following reasons given for it. It was owing, in part, it is said, to the degeneracy of the empire at this epoch, especially in the capital of the empire, and under the vicious but tolerant reigns of Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus. The Christians, protected by Marcia, the mistress of Commodus, and by Mammaea, the aunt of Heliogabalus, became wealthy and corrupt; while the bishops of Rome, Zephyrinus and Callistus, (under whom Caius flourished,) were very far from being what the False Decretals and the Roman Breviary have made them, saints and martyrs, whose feasts are to be celebrated on August 26 and October 14. On the testimony of Hippolytus,⁵ their contemporary, Callistus and Zephyrinus were most despicable men, the one for his avarice and venality, the other for his greediness and malpractices. But if this decay of the Latin Church in the third century will account in part for its error respecting the Hpistle to the Hebrews, how much more wonderful is its universal return to sound doctrine in the more corrupt times of Jerome; and still more, its unshaken firmness in the twelve still darker ages between Jerome and the Reformation?

627. The second reason given by the fathers for the relinquishment of this epistle by the churches of the West, was the anxiety of the Latin doctors, in their controversies, to get rid of some passages which unfortunately seemed to them to favour the error of the Montanists and Novatianists. But how much more seductive must this evil temptation to reject the epistle have become, some centuries later, when its powerful opposition to all the doctrines of the mass became apparent? when it was discovered with what copiousness and precision Paul had combated beforehand, in this admirable epistle, the very recent doctrine in which it was daringly asserted that the priests, as sacrificers in the place of Jesus Christ, offer to God daily on a hundred thousand altars, for the sins of the living and the dead, the true flesh and true divinity of Christ, and. this as really as they were offered to Him the first time by Christ Himself on the cross of Golgotha!⁶ — a doctrine by which the enemy endeavours to turn away our regards from the death of Jesus Christ, and to substitute for them a magic miracle performed by the priest! Is it possible to erect a new altar without overturning that of the cross, on which Jesus Christ offered Himself once, as a sacrifice for our sins, with an eternal efficacy? Do we not destroy His testament of grace, in which He assures us of the remission of our sins, if we substitute for it another made by a mere human being? Do we not destroy His real and perpetual priesthood, if we place in its room miserable sinners? and is not such an act an attempt at snatching Him from the right hand of the Father, where He is seated for ever as an only priest, merciful, compassionate, faithful, holy, without spot, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, and Mediator between God and man?

628. I ask, then, might it not be expected, with such a doctrine preached everywhere, that in the course of so many ages a great number of Caiuses would spring up in the Roman Church, to ask a second time for the rejection of this dangerous Epistle to the Hebrews as impossible to be apostolic? — this epistle, in which the mass is beforehand so powerfully condemned? this epistle, in which it is said of Christ so repeatedly, that “He offered Himself up once,” (vii. 27;) that “He was once offered to bear the sins of many, and will appear unto them that look for Him the second time without sin unto salvation,” (ix. 28;) that “He is a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec,” (v. 6, ix. 12;) and that “having offered ONE SACRIFICE for sin, He has sat down for ever at the right hand of God,” (x. 11, 12;) that He possesses an unchangeable, intransmissible priesthood, (vii. 24;) that “by one offering He hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified,” (x. 14;) because “where there is remission of sins, there is-no more offering for sin,” (x. 18;) in a word, He does not offer Himself many times, “for then He must often have suffered since the foundation of the world, but now once, in the consummation of the ages, He hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,” (ix. 26.)

629. Now, after reading so many precise declarations so often repeated, and with an intention so manifestly prophetic, how could you have thought it possible, when the mass had become prevalent, that such a practice and the Epistle to the Hebrews could subsist together for ten years only in the same church? Could it be thought possible that Rome, after having, against the judgment of the whole Eastern Church, rejected this book for a century and a half, (when as yet she was entirely ignorant of the sacrifice of the mass and the adoration of the host,) should undertake to guard it for fourteen hundred years down to our days, after she had set forth all those doctrines which destroy the supper of the Lord, deny His priesthood, turn away our regards from His expiatory death, and substitute the magical and material miracle of transubstantiation for the spiritual and majestic miracle of grace by which the believer, and the believer only, divinely eats the flesh and divinely drinks the blood of his Saviour?⁷

630. What, then, shall we say to these things? We shall say that here again, what, according to all probability, must needs happen, has not happened, and what, humanly speaking, ought not to take place, has been accomplished. We shall say that, in the strange course of events relative to the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Latin Church, before, and during, and after the providential fixation of the canon, there has been most manifestly a testimony of that divine agency which protects the Scriptures.

1) See Prop. 300, &c.

2) Hist. Eccles., iii, 3.

3) De Viris Ilustribus, cap. lix.: — Cajus sub Zephyrino — disputationem adversus Proculum, Montani sectatorem valde insignem habuit. et in eodem volu mine epistolas Pauli tredecim tantum enumerans, dicit ejus non esse; sed et apud Romanos usque hodie quasi Pauli apostoli non habetur.”

4) Hieron, De Viris Illustrib., cap. lix.

5) Κατὰ πασῶν αῖρὲσιων ἔλεγχος. See Bunsen’s Hippolytus and his Age, (Five Letters to Archdeacon Hare,) vol. i., p. 126-131. Callistus, the protégé of Zephyrinus, was condemned to the mines in Sardinia, not for his faith, but his frauds.

6) Missale Romanum (Oblatio Hostiae): — “Suscipe, Sancte Pater,” &c.

7) The miracle, as the priest understands it, causes this Divine body to be eaten by unbelievers, and even by animals. “Si hostia consecrata dispareat,” says the Roman Missal, “ab aliquo animali accepta,” (De Defectn Panis, iii., 7;) while we say, as St Augustin has often said, that “to eat this food is to abide in Christ, and to have Him abiding in us; because to believe in Him is to eat the bread of life, Why dost thou prepare the teeth and the stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten.” (In Ey. Joh., cap. vi, Tract. xxv.) “Hoc est manducare iJlam escam — in Christo manere et illum manentum in se habere. Ut quid paras dentes et ventrem? Crede et manducasti.” (Ibid., Tract. xxv.) “Quomodo in coelum manum mittam, ut ibi sedentem teneam? Fidem mitte et tenuwisti.” (In Ev. Joh., cap. xi. et xii. Tract. iv.; Edit. Bened., Paris, 1659, tom. iii., pp. 630, 490, 501, 4911.)

And again (August., De Doctr. Chr., lib. iii., p. 52): — “Si praeceptiva locutio est, aut flagitium aut facinus vetans, non est figurata. Siautem flagitia aut facinus videtur jubere, figurata est. Nisi manducaveritis, inquit, carnem flit hominis, non habebitis vitam in vobis; facinus videtur aut flagitium jubere. Figura ergo est; praecipiens passioni Domini esse communicandum, et suaviter atque utiliter recondendum in memoria, quod pro nobis caro ejus crucifixa est et vulnerata.